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Ask for the corporate rate. Or not.

Released:

July 30, 2012

The US has the world’s highest corporate tax rate. That has some big firms going abroad for bargains.

The United States has the world’s highest corporate income tax rate at up to 35 percent. Japan recently lowered its corporate tax rate to 30 percent, and some US companies are moving operations to countries with lower rates such as Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is 12.5 percent. After various tax deductions and credits, the US collected $205 billion in corporate income tax in 2009 from 5.8 million corporations, down from $228 billion the year before.